About Kon Trubkovich

Raised in Moscow until the age of 11, Kon Trubkovich explores themes of confinement, rebellion, and autonomy in paintings, drawings, photographs, and sculptures based on still images from videos. His sources evince his preoccupation with incarceration, and include footage from the Attica Prison Riots, the Stanford Prison Experiment, the Russian island of Sakhalin, and numerous other clips found on the internet. Drawing parallels between the artist's studio and the prison as locations of cyclical rebellion and containment, Trubkovich uses isolated fragments from his source footage (including interference and distortion) as the basis for drawings and paintings. To Trubkovich, the grainy paused images feel like partial memories and evoke uncertain narratives. The artist also mines similar imagery to create entire video reconstructions, as in No Exit (2008), which depicts naked prisoners marching in endless circles in the aftermath of a riot.